


broken arrows

by xxpaynoxx



Category: Football RPF, Real Person Fiction
Genre: Blood, Cutting, Depression, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-15
Updated: 2016-03-15
Packaged: 2018-05-26 20:27:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6254638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xxpaynoxx/pseuds/xxpaynoxx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>leo fucks up and punishes himself. neymar comforts him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	broken arrows

leo can't breathe.

dani had burst into his room in a whirlwind of fury, and at three in the morning, leo obviously assumed it was nothing. he also smelled strongly of alcohol, so when leo opened the door, he didn't think about how dani knew about him and neymar.

when dani’s fist connected with his face, he figured it out.

dani screams at him, calls him names in spanish and portuguese, and sits on his chest and punches him until leo can feel blood all over his nose and teeth. he takes it, because he deserves it. he deserves everything that's coming to him.

he leaves, and leo lays on the floor after that, remembering neymar’s choked sobs as he walked out of the room and away from him.

and leo had let him.

**...**   


he misses his classes.

he misses so many classes, he doesn't even know what's happening in the world anymore. all he knows is the expensive stale cologne on his pillow and the button-up black shirt he sleeps with these days, clutching it like a lifeline.

geri and masche come by and try to talk some sense into him, but he can barely hear them. his hair is greasy and sticky. his cheeks are rough with stubble. his eyes feel dry and it hurts to blink, and it hurts to look at gerard and see his own pain reflected in his friend’s eyes.

gerard throws his hands in the air and walks out, mascherano right behind him. the door slams, and leo presses his face further into the pillow.

“don't do anything stupid,” mascherano had said.

leo bites back a retort of  _ I've already done that. _

**...**   


he's bleeding.

he felt like he was already bleeding, like his heart had been shredded by a piece of glass, but now his fingers are patterned with red as he looks in awe at the deep gashes he's made in his arms. then, his vision goes red, and he can feel his skin opening everywhere, blood seeping out of his arms and his legs underneath his shorts, his neck, his collarbones, every expanse of visible skin seems to suddenly be tainted with blood.

he crawls into the bathtub and curls up on his back, the tile pressing coldly against his lower back where his shirt rides up, and does something even more stupid than what he'd already done.

he picks up on the first ring.

_ “leo?” _

he almost chuckles at the hope filling neymar’s voice as he looks down at his arms, watching the blood fall onto his pale skin. it looks so out of place, but then again, this is his punishment.

“hey, Ney.”

_ “thank God you're alive. i heard dani kicked your ass. i’m sorry about him. and i’m sorry about us.” _

he starts laughing weakly then.

“us? i was the fuck-up, ney. i told you i didn't love you, that i never loved you, and that was a lie. i lied, i lied straight to your face, and now i’m punishing myself for what i did.”

he hears neymar breathe in sharply.

_ “you’re...what? you're punishing yourself? oh my god, please don't-leo, please don't tell me you're-oh my god, i’m coming over.” _

he barely gets a “no” off of his lips before he's met with the dial tone, and his shaky hands lose control of the phone. it slides out of his grip and onto his lap, and he leans back against the tub, feeling tears start to fall down his face as he shuts his eyes. the cuts start to burn, and he feels like someone set him on fire.

“i fucked up,” he whispers shakily to himself.

it seems like hours before he hears neymar’s voice in his flat, frantically yelling  _ leo leo leo where the fuck are you oh my god leo _ and he can't even whisper. he feels so weak, and that's how he's supposed to feel. he's a coward. he's weak, he's weak and afraid and he pushed away the only person who loved him unconditionally.

he hears neymar swear loudly in portuguese, hears the door crack open and suddenly he's there, and leo cracks open his eyes and sees neymar standing in the doorway in jeans and a white shirt, and his eyes are wide and glassy and he looks absolutely  _ terrified. _

his phone falls out of his hand and onto the floor with a thud, and he falls to his knees in the doorway, a hand going up to his face to rub at his eyes. “no, no-please, please no,” he starts whispering, crawling across the bathroom floor to where leo is. he feels neymar crawl into the tub, feels him wiggle around and slip behind him, feels his hands shakily rest on his bloody arms.

leo looks up and sees neymar’s eyes as they travel across his skin, taking in every cut and every drop of blood that's spilling across leo’s skin, making him a gory mess. some blood marks up the bottom of his shirt as leo lifts his hands, and he smiles.

“your shirt is bloody,” he slurs, and neymar scoffs. “shut the fuck up, i have twenty others just like it,” he jokes, but it's weak and falls flat as he looks down at leo, and leo feels his heart twinge.

“listen, i’m so sorry. i didn't-i didn't mean any of that. what i said to you, that was bullshit. it was weak bullshit, and i’m weak and i wish you hadn't seen that side of me. i’m so sorry i did that to you.”

leo feels wetness on his cheeks, but it's not his own. his tears have long since dried up. he looks up, and realizes that it's ney, neymar is crying, and his tears are falling off of his lashes and onto his face.

leo starts trembling. “i’m cold and i fucked up,” he sobs, and neymar brings his body into a bone-crushing hug. he whispers in his ear, but leo feels darkness ebbing at his vision. he starts panicking, because  _ no, fucking hell, i can't die yet, neymar doesn't know how much i love him. _

his lips press against neymar’s neck, against his black tattoo, and he mouths at the letters and feels neymar shudder beneath him. “leo, we have to clean you up,” he hears him say, hears it through his chest as a rumble, and he detaches his lips from his neck as neymar moves to the side of the tub, picking up a first aid kit and taking the gauze out.

he feels the disinfectant spray against his arms, and he hisses as it burns into his skin, but neymar’s thumbs rubbing circles on an expanse of skin near his elbow that's not covered in blood help him deal with it. the other cuts he doesn't attend to, but he wraps layers gauze around his arms, tightly and firmly.

leo feels himself being lifted out of the tub, and he's so tired that he can't even complain that he's being treated like a kid, that neymar shouldn't be seeing him like this, so naked and vulnerable to reality.

there is warmth surrounding him again, soft sheets pressing against his arms, but he doesn't snuggle into them. he doesn't deserve this luxury because he failed. he failed neymar, he failed himself, he failed  _ them. _

the despair finally claws its way out of his throat in a sob, and then he's crying, the dam he built to hide his feelings swarming across his soul like a cleanser, his burning arms reaching up and covering his face. he doesn't know where neymar went, and he feels his heart twitch.

**...**

neymar stares at him.

leo's curled up in the tub, and there's blood  _ everywhere _ . it's all over his arms and his legs, and his fingers are caked with it as he shivers, his eyes closed as tears leak from underneath his lashes onto his cheeks.

neymar feels his phone slip from his grip, and as it falls to the floor with a small thud, he does too, mumbling  _ no, no, please, no, _ as if that will make this all a bad dream, a freaky nightmare he'd conjured up at three in the morning.

leo’s eyes crack open, and neymar’s heart nearly breaks. he looks so dead and empty, so hollow that he wants to reach out and hold him and fill him up again with all the things he loved, and shelter him from anything that could possibly hurt him.

neymar had forgiven leo within the hour of them arguing. he knew leo had fucked up, and he was waiting for him to own up. dani had gone over and beaten him shitless, and showed up with bloody knuckles and a drunken smile on his face, satisfied. 

but he didn't want that for leo. he didn't want his friends to kick his ass when leo hurt him. he had shoved dani up against the wall, eyes flashing as he growled in his face to never touch him again. dani had spat in his face and he'd winced as the stench of alcohol hit his nose as dani snarled, “he hurt you, so i hurt him just as much so he knew how it felt.”

but dani didn't get it. leo knew when he fucked up. they'd argued before, and leo had apologized before. but this time, neymar had ignored him. it was hard to not take what leo said to heart; he was his boyfriend. neymar gave leo everything, he bared himself like a sick game of operation, and leo had gone in and pulled out every piece regardless of how much he smacked against the metal siding.

but neymar had forgiven him, because that's what people do with people they love; they forgive each other.

he hadn't heard from leo in a week, and hadn't seen him in class. mascherano and gerard didn't say anything to him, only that he was having a hard time. dani forbade him from going inside his dorm, and even had fucking _marc bartra_ make sure that neymar didn't try to sneak into his dorm.

it was sick, hearing about leo unraveling and not being able to do anything about it. it was sick and frustrating and  _ wrong _ .

and now, as he watches leo sleep, his bloody gauze-covered arms peeking out from beneath the covers, neymar feels his heart break.

he slips off his clothes and climbs into bed, just like they used to, and moves until leo’s back is flush with his chest, his arms circled around leo’s stomach and resting just above his navel. he presses his lips against the back of his neck, and sighs.

“i forgive you.”

leo murmurs something intelligible in spanish and shifts, and neymar smiles.

  
leo may not have forgiven himself, but neymar forgives him, and that's always a start.

**Author's Note:**

> well, i wrote this in thirty minutes. it's been a rough night.


End file.
